


the big gay freak out

by steamcurious



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Isaac comes back to town, M/M, Scott is a hot mess, and play Super Smash bros, best bros talk it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steamcurious/pseuds/steamcurious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah, problem is that’s the security-blanket model, bro. You stay there forever, it’s like arrested development or something. These people you admire--Deaton, your mom--these are people who go for it, who make themselves vulnerable to these kinds of situations, to these big decisions. That’s what being a normal, functioning adult is gonna be, and it’s gonna suck, but I think the prevailing theory is that you find something you like so much that the good bits outweigh the shitty bits.”</p><p> </p><p>So much for the silent, supportive listener. Stiles decides his strategy for guiding his best friend through his own, personal Big Gay Freak Out is--and surely this will surprise no one--to talk his ear off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the big gay freak out

Stiles shouldn’t be surprised when Scott shows up on his landing with a six pack of bad beer, a freezer pizza, and a strange, guilty grimace. “My turn,” he says, and he’s only sounded more pathetic on very, very special occasions, so Stiles is all too happy to put off studying for O-Chem, even though his professor has been hinting for a week that there will be a quiz soon and he’s nowhere near prepared. He does, after all, _owe_ Scott. He remembers it vividly, a situation very similar to tonight’s, only they were sodas instead of beers because the two of them were in high school at the time and not cool enough by far to have fake IDs that were worth the paper they were printed on. They’re still under 21, but their fake IDs are of higher quality, and Scott at least has perfected the ‘no-big-deal’ attitude that might raise eyebrows if he were to go for the hard stuff but can at least reliably haul in some Coronas.

So no, Stiles shouldn’t be surprised, but he is, by the timing if by nothing else. If he’s being honest, he had thought it was coming for a long time now, had nearly initiated it himself with a well-placed question--there had been some days, years back, when the aching in Scott’s eyes had been so intense that an “All right there, buddy?” may easily have sent him tumbling--but the timing now is all wrong.

Not wanting to make any assumptions until Scott is ready to talk, he just lets Scott take over his place, preheating the oven and making a big racket opening and closing cupboards and drawers like he’s looking for something even though he definitely knows where everything is.

Stiles doesn’t remember much about his own session, so he’s not sure exactly what behavior is due here. It was so long ago, and he was so delirious with confusion and exhaustion. He doesn’t remember Scott doing anything other than sitting there and listening while Stiles talked up to it, talked around it, then gradually trudged back through it, too scared to look his best friend in the eye. When it was over, Scott had patted him on the shoulder and then said something along the lines of, “Of course it’s okay, dude.” And, as they had loaded something on Netflix, and as Stiles had given himself a grateful stomachache by drinking more than half of the sodas because his mouth was _so dry_ , Scott had added, “No accounting for taste, though,” and they’d ended up laughing and wrestling and taunting each other while the movie played and played.

He can’t remember now whether he had been grateful for Scott’s silence or whether he had wanted a little guidance at the time. At any rate, it won’t do him any good to remember, because Scott isn’t Stiles, Scott is Scott, and things will naturally be different.

Scott is still prowling the kitchen, and it occurs to Stiles to wonder if this is some kind of werewolf thing. He’s clearly got his hackles raised, and he’s retreading this familiar territory as though he’s hoping to mark it with his presence. Maybe doing so is making him feel safer. Maybe, if he’s safer, he’ll be able to say what he came to say. Stiles really, truly hopes he can, almost as much as he hopes it does Scott more use to say aloud than it ended up ever doing Stiles.

“How’s classes and stuff?” Scott asks. He’s behind the cabinets, out of sight, just a disembodied voice.

“All right,” he says. “You?”

“Painful,” Scott groans. He comes back in with a beer for Stiles but then returns immediately to the kitchen. “Do we really need degrees--I mean _really_? There’s just so much training, so many years of it, and really at the end of it all I want is what I’m doing now at Deaton’s. I don’t even know if I want the surgery and the hard stuff like consulting or euthanasia, anyway, I just want to be able to help out and be there for them and….” He gives a frustrated groan that’s so quiet Stiles wonders if maybe he isn’t supposed to hear it.

“What’s the matter, Scotty?” Stiles asks, and he’s wondering if maybe this isn’t going to be the freak-out he was expecting. “Rethinking our life choices, are we?”

Scott is silent a moment, and he meanders into the doorway so that Stiles can see him. He’s long in the face, sure, glaring at his hand on the neck of the bottle with this forever-stare. “I don’t know, dude. Why can’t everything just stay where it is? It makes sense as it is.”

It occurs to Stiles that maybe this conversation isn’t _just_ about going for vet or vet tech.

“I get it,” says Stiles. “You want it to stay the same because it’s comfortable, because everything is light and fluffy and uncomplicated. You know that moving forward is hard work--years of it--and that, at the end of it all, yeah, okay, maybe you’ll be in it with both feet finally, and there might be some rewards to that, but that also it can get ugly and gross and you’ll have to make hard choices every day from then on and for the rest of your life.”

Scott’s face crumples. “Exactly.”

“Yeah, problem is that’s the security-blanket model, bro. You stay there forever, it’s like arrested development or something. These people you admire--Deaton, your mom--these are people who go for it, who make themselves vulnerable to these kinds of situations, to these big decisions. That’s what being a normal, functioning adult is gonna be, and it’s gonna suck, but I think the prevailing theory is that you find something you like so much that the good bits outweigh the shitty bits.”

So much for the silent, supportive listener. Stiles decides his strategy for guiding his best friend through his own, personal Big Gay Freak Out is--and surely this will surprise no one--to talk his ear off.

The timer goes off, and Scott leaves to put the pizza in the oven. Stiles realizes he’s finished his Corona in record time--must be all these lingering silences--but it’s all right, because Scott brings him another one, and another one for himself, and it’s rapidly become apparent that a six pack won’t be enough.

“Eighteen minutes,” Scott says, flopping heavily onto the far end of the sofa. He uncurls, then, like he’s taking root in the cushion itself, and takes a long drag at his fresh beer. If his face is anything to judge by, it’s no more refreshing than the last one. “So,” and Scott rolls his head to pin Stiles with a particularly simpering look, “you think I should, I don’t know, work at it?”

“Sure,” says Stiles, “but what do I know? The only thing that matters is that you figure out what you want and how much that matters to you.”

“It’s so strange.” Scott huffs a sigh. “It’s like, what I want changes depending on where I am, who I’m with. It’s like I’m all these different people, all at once, like there never was a single _me_ , this individual _self_ who does and wants and is.”

It’s good to see Scott’s been absorbing so much of his gen-ed philosophy course this semester, even if he’s just turned it inward in all kinds of ways that are probably no good for him at all.

“Well,” Stiles says, “even if maybe you’re not your singular, true self when you’re with me, you’re at least your oldest and, therefore, to some extent, your most genuine and innate, wouldn’t you say?”

Scott shrugs. “I guess.”

“So,” Stiles continues, gaining in pitch and intensity, “what do you want right now? Do you really want things to just stay as they are forever even as you age and things grow more and more complicated around you? Or do you want the security and the experience to grow with them?”

Scott’s eyes narrow. “It sounds like you already know what I should want.”

Stiles holds his hands up defensively. “My only dog in this race is you,” he reminds him, and then he laughs because _dog_ , and Scott laughs, too and slaps him lightly on the arm.

“What I really want right now,” says Scott, “is to play some Smash Bros and just not think about it.”

So Stiles loads up the system and they beat the shit out of each other and some AI characters for a while, pausing only to decide that the pizza needs five more minutes and then, three minutes later, to bring the only-slightly-burning pizza out of the oven and take the batteries out of all of the smoke alarms. They crack open the last beers from the six pack and sit down again, brushing black bits off their pizza slices, which they have to eat before restarting their game. It’s paused on Scott’s Pikachu, who is just about to crack a lightning bolt down on Stiles’s Sheik’s head. Stiles isn’t anxious to return to gameplay.

He’s not sure how much longer he’s supposed to pretend they’re discussing Scott’s career decisions, so he tries for a subtle side-approach to the real topic of the night. “Heard from Isaac lately? He coming to town anytime soon?”

Scott immediately groans and lets his head dangle. “I figured you’d know, man.”

“Know?” Stiles talks around a big bite of pizza that’s definitely too hot, but he’s too hungry to care. “Know what?”

“They’re coming back. Like, driving this way right now. Isaac texted earlier and asked if he’d be able to crash at my place when he got here. Evidently he’s desperate to get away from Peter and Derek. Something about two days with them in a car--”

Stiles can feel his stomach churn at this. _They’re_ coming back, Scott said, back from their months-long Midwest trip that had for quite some time felt more like a permanent thing than just a visit. But now they’re on their way back to California, Isaac and Peter and….

“No,” he says, struggling to keep his voice steady, because tonight is the Big Gay Freak Out part 2, for sure, but this time Scott is the protagonist and Stiles is just a sidekick. “Hmm, weird, I didn’t know. Well, not so weird, really. Why would I know? Who would tell me? I don’t even think any of them have my new number, except, you know, Isaac, but he’s telling you, he can’t be expected just to keep the whole world informed at all times, that’s a lot of responsibility for one poor kicked puppy to take on, y’know what I mean? God, why isn’t there more beer?”

Scott is looking at Stiles in kind of a bewildered way, but he says, “There’s more in the car.”

Stiles is up in a second, catching Scott’s keys and rushing out into the night air, which is mercifully cold because Stiles feels kind of flushed. He finds the second six pack buckled into the passenger seat--natural caretaker, Scott is--although he takes a moment to brace himself before heading back up to his apartment.

When he reenters, he finds that Scott is staring at his phone and smiling this faroff, misty smile that Stiles hasn’t seen in years, not since Kira, and it makes him hesitate before interrupting. “Text?”

“From the road,” says Scott with a nod, not looking away from the phone screen. “They’re in Kansas now. He’s playing ‘how many miles away is that overpass up ahead’ with Peter.”

“The trick is to round up,” says Stiles. “Place like Kansas, it’s always more than it seems.”

“Kansas,” Scott says thoughtfully, and his face gets all distant, like he’s calculating something. “When do you think--?”

“Like a day away, at the closest.”

“Damn,” Scott says, although he looks relieved.

“So, you gonna let Isaac stay with you, you think?”

Scott’s expression turns pained. “I haven’t answered him yet?” he says, speaking it like a question with a rising intonation, like he’s waiting for Stiles to answer. When he doesn’t, Scott makes a frustrated noise and flings his phone down onto the couch. “He probably thinks I’m, like, the worst.”

Stiles picks up Scott’s phone. Scott is watching him from under his hand, which he’s dramatically draped over his face, and, though he winces when Stiles types in Scott’s password, he doesn’t stop him. Stiles takes this as tacit license to look back through their text conversation. The most recent text, about the car games with Peter, is only the last in a long line of small comments from Isaac. _I think Derek might kill Peter_ is there, along with _Peter’s treating us to something called “chopped cow sandwiches”_ and _Derek seriously just told us he would turn this car around if we didn’t shut up_ _._ Stiles locates the Text of Interest, sitting sandwiched between two observations about how driving through Illinois is kind of pretty: _Mind if I crash at yours when we get back? I’m going kind of crazy with these two, and I really miss you._

Stiles tries to imagine how he would feel if he had ever, ever received a message like this from his own tormentor. His mouth goes dry at the thought.

Scott, Stiles realizes, hasn’t replied to Isaac in three days, since before they even left Chicago. All that silence, and Isaac keeps sending messages, notes about little things like how he can smell every cow and how his wolf kind of wants to go running through the cornstalks and wants Scott to be there with him, too.

So, because Scott isn’t stopping him, Stiles scrolls back, all the way back, through what might have filled a Kerouac novel of road trip observations. Finally, he starts to see conversations, back-and-forths between the two men that indicates a world of intimacy that Stiles might have guessed at but had never, ever known.

_You studying for your bio test?_

_nnngh u sound like stiles_

_Just want to make sure you’re not_ _too stressed out._

_cud use a chat, call when u get a chance_

__  
  


Then,

 

_wat’s the french 4 ‘joy of life’ u were telling me about_

_Joie de vive_

_cool, thnx_

_*Vivre, sorry, phone corrected me._

_But it’s pronounced like vive._

_What’s the context?_

_nothing, just trying to remember_

_u shud teach me french and ill teach u spanish lol_

_We could watch arty flicks and telenovelas_ _like we always planned_

_my telenovela name is escobar i think_

_I like it! What’s mine?_

_let me think_

_ur name is hebrew so its hard_

_Don’t sweat it_

_u know ur name means “he laughs”_

_Did you just Google my name?_

_not if thats weird_

 

And, further up,

 

_Cold here. Miss you._

  
  


Followed by a ten-minute gap, before

 

_miss u 2_

 

Followed by a selfie of Isaac, pink-cheeked and wrapped nearly to the nose in a scarf, curls blown by the wind, posed in front of what looks like it must be Chicago’s grayest body of water.

Stiles is swallowing down a lump in his throat when he hands Scott’s phone back to him. “Yeah, you might want to text him back sometime or else at best he’ll think you’re dead.”

“Great,” Scott moans. “Now even you think I’m an asshole.”

“No,” Stiles corrects him. “You’re in a panic. You’re avoiding. But staying with you doesn’t have to mean anything except staying with you. I mean, you two lived together for all that time in high school, didn’t you? And nothing happened then.”

Scott only picks up a pillow and hides his face in it.

“What?” Stiles says, a little more sharply than he had intended. “Scott-- _did something happen then_?”

“First of all,” says Scott, not removing his face from the pillow, “there were two rooms there, so we didn’t always have to be--right up next to each other. So it’s different. And second of all--”

“Something happened.”

“Something totally happened,” Scott confirms wretchedly. “I don’t know, I didn’t even let myself think about it, really. At first it was because Derek had kicked him out and he was, like, feeling like no one was there for him. And he gets these night terrors, and so if I held him, I mean, if I was there when he woke up, it was better--”

“Oh, god,” Stiles says. This goes deeper than he’d suspected.

“And once--”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Scott only gives him a look and continues. “One time, he was crying, and I kissed him. That’s it, just a kiss, and just once, and he was vulnerable, and then he and Allison started--so, yeah, that was all there was.”

Stiles hears the hitch in Scott’s voice at Allison’s name. It’s been years, but the subject is always raw. Stiles supposes that, as much as that has to do with the wonderful, smart, awesome woman who would have been around now had it not been for the nogitsune--and yes, he feels personally guilty for this, _of course_ he does, and Scott’s usually so careful not to bring it up, but tonight isn’t about Stiles, for once--it probably also has something to do with Isaac’s subsequent disappearance. For all his _pack_ and _family_ and _I trust Scott_ , Isaac had up and left without a word, and that event is all tied up with Allison’s death in their heads, like it wasn’t just this one person who ended but an entire era. Isaac’s resurfacing a few months ago has always felt like something of a haunting to Stiles, like a bygone part of their lives that it’s going to take some real adjustment to accommodate.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Okay, so… you two kissed. He dated your ex. He left when your ex died. He came back, wearing a beret and holding a baguette and sporting some major Argent-caliber hunter skills, and he’s been texting you love poetry and cute pictures and pining for you like nothing ever changed.”

“I’m glad you resisted the temptation to say ‘let me get this straight.’”

Stiles slaps Scott lightly on the arm. “Shut up and pay attention. I’m about to get to the real talk.” When Scott only zips it and nods, Stiles continues. “You’re mad at him.” Scott opens his mouth as if to protest, so Stiles holds up a hand and carries on, voice louder. “I remember how it was after he left, dude. You hardly mentioned him. You tried to replace him--don’t pretend you didn’t--but it wasn’t working because you didn’t have a name for what he’d been to you, what need he’d fulfilled for you, and besides, you couldn’t find anyone like him. So you’re mad that he left, and you’re mad that he stayed gone, and most of all you’re mad that he’s back but that you still don’t know what he is and what you are together and why he makes you feel the way he makes you feel, and you wonder if fucking him will make it all better, easier to understand, because you _do_ want to fuck him, but you know how he is, and how you are, and you’re afraid that crossing that line might wreck you both.”

Scott’s eyes are wide. “Stiles,” he says, in an undertone, and there’s so much feeling to it that it occurs to Stiles that maybe this tirade wasn’t entirely about Scott and Isaac, not exclusively.

“Or, you know, something like that.”

“Stiles,” says Scott, his voice still low and gentle like he’s talking to a scared animal in the clinic, “you know that Derek--”

“Uh uh uh!” Stiles flourishes his hand elaborately. “None of that! Tonight is you-and-Isaac time. No need to bring up any of that.”

Scott, rolling his eyes, says, “That’s just the problem, though. We’ve never talked about it, not since that night.”

“If you’re referring to the Big Gay Freak Out--”

“Oh god, of course you _named_ it--”

“--then I’ll have you know that I’ve worked through all that stuff individually, and that time and prolonged lack of sexual fulfillment have extinguished any and all alleged impulses I may have once fostered toward--”

“Stiles, dude, you’re so full of shit.”

“And anyway, he’d never--”

“It was ’cause you were underage, you know.”

Stiles stops at this. Scott is pinning him with a smugly knowing look which is really upsetting the power dynamics of the evening. “What? What are you talking about?” Stiles asks, suddenly uncomfortable.

“He was way interested. One time he asked Isaac if you were into guys.”

“What? No way.”

“Way. And anyway, it’s a werewolf thing. You can kind of smell it on each other. No secrets and all that.”

“Well, I haven’t been underage in almost two years, in case he hasn’t noticed.”

“And you also haven’t been around Derek in almost two years. Not like you were back then. And he’s awkward about it, and he’s hurting from all--from Kate, and Ms. Blake, and Braden. And he assumes that you’d make a move if you were interested in him still.”

“That’s dumb. Me, make a move? When have I ever made a move?”

But Scott only lifts a shoulder and brings his cold pizza crust up to his mouth. It snaps with a crisp _crunch_ , and it can’t be satisfying at all because it’s cold and burnt, so Scott is probably just eating it to avoid saying anything.

“This is ridiculous,” says Stiles. “We were both hung up, once upon a time, and then it was over. And they think they can just drive back from an extended stay in some Chicago pack--full of all kinds of wolfish sexploits, no doubt--and we’re supposed to just keep studying for finals as if nothing’s different.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna finish these,” says Stiles, lifting the two remaining beers, “and we’re gonna text Isaac so that he knows you haven’t been kidnapped or killed. We’re gonna text him and tell him he can crash here if he wants, since I’ve got a foldout, and that way you can see him and make a decision then, when you’re sober and when he’s close enough you can smell him or whatever. And if you decide that you’re too hurt, or too angry, more power to you, and he’ll sleep here and you’ll go home alone. But if you want to fuck him ten ways from Sunday even then, I’ll happily take your keys and sleep at yours and you can use any surface in this place for any purpose so long as you disinfect it after.”

Scott is already digging in his pocket for his phone. “You’re the best,” he says with a smile. Then, he pauses over the keypad as if struggling for words, so Stiles gets up, leaves him to it for a minute to straighten up in the kitchen. He’s stowed the cookie sheet Scott used for the pizza and tossed the empty beer bottles in the recycling bin--is this what adulthood looks like?--by the time Scott calls, “Okay, sent!”

Stiles trips back into the living room and plucks Scott’s phone from his hands to read his message.

 

_u can stay at stiles’ place. he’s got a foldout._

 

Stiles grins. “What is this, McCall--punctuation? Is it possible that sobriety actually _inhibits_ your capacity for grammar?”

Isaac is so quick to respond, the phone buzzes while Stiles is still holding it.

 

_Stiles is the best._

 

“What is it?” Scott says, eyes wide. “What’d he say?”

“The truest words anyone has ever said,” Stiles says, handing the phone back to Scott. Then, picking up his controller, he unpauses their long-abandoned game of Smash Bros just in time for Sheik to be electrocuted right off the screen, and Scott cackles in what Stiles determines will be short-lived victory.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon is and always will be that Scott texts like a preteen.


End file.
